


Text Back Tempo

by duckcrab



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-06
Updated: 2010-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckcrab/pseuds/duckcrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Text Back Tempo | Ariadne/Arthur | R-ish| Arthur receives her text at an ungodly hour, and replies immediately informing her of this fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Text Back Tempo

_Come over._

Arthur receives her text at an ungodly hour, and replies immediately informing her of this fact.

_Damn. Forgot time difference. Sorry._

_It’s fine_ , he replies. He leaves the phone on the bed as he shuffles into the bathroom. There is a message waiting for him when he comes back.

_Are you coming over or not?_

_Ariadne. Where are you?_

_In my apartment._

_Which is where?_

_Paris._

_And where am I?_

_New York. You know, they have these amazing things called airplanes!_

He is pulling a t-shirt over his head as he types out, _Smartass_.

 

 

 

_What’s the apartment number?_

He asks even though he already knows.

_4C. But I’m not there._

_You’re not in New York are you? Tell me we didn’t just recreate some scene from a bad romantic comedy._

He can almost hear her laugh. Almost. 

_I’m on the roof. Take elevator to top floor. Door at end of the hall._

_I see you_ , he types out when he does. She seems even smaller than he remembers in comparison to the surrounding structures. By the time she receives the message they have already exchanged pleasantries.

“Sit,” she says, and hoists herself up on the concrete ledge, gesturing to a few chairs situated into an odd half circle. He can only imagine what takes place on this roof on any given night. Oh, to be in college again.

“Lawn chairs,” he says, running his finger over the cool metal, darkness hiding his smirk.

After he settles into one he asks how she is, how she’s been.

“Not bad,” she says. “I graduated today.”

“How does that feel?”

"I feel the same as I did an hour before I got my diploma," she shrugs. "I have a slight buzz going, but that's the only difference. I would have invited you, but my parents were coming and I would have to explain you to my mother. I did you a favor, really."

"I can understand," he says, eyebrows ticking up in empathy. 

"You didn't have to come all the way out here," she says a little while later, after a police siren has faded somewhere deep into the city. 

"I know," he says.

"But you did."

"So it would appear."

"Why did you?"

"Because you asked _so_ nicely."

"No other reason?"

He finds her eyes, loses his words. 

"I think we've skirted around this issue long enough," she slips off of the ledge, and in a few quick steps stands before him. Her palms are flat against the tops of his thighs, and her hair falls against his cheek as she leans down to speak quietly into his ear. 

"Do you think about it?"

"About what?"

"Our kiss."

"No," he swallows. "Not at all."

Her thumbs slide down, brush his inner thigh near the femoral artery. His muscles twitch involuntarily. His knuckles go pale on the plastic arms of the chair.

"Is that so? Not thinking about it now either?"

Her knee bumps his, sending an unexpected spark of electricity through him. Nerve endings raw, and ready. 

“Arthur," she says, "if you don’t kiss me right now I will jump off of this building.”

“You don’t,” he says, grabbing her hips and pulling her astride his lap, “have to ask me twice.”

His mouth is open against her cheek, teeth grazing her jaw.

He's not sure that the chair will support the both of them.

Her shirt comes off so easily. Her body is so warm.

Plastic groans against metal.

Her fingers have slipped open his jeans, applied pressure, and he cannot stop the sound that escapes him, cannot stop the movement of himself against her hand.

At the fringes of his consciousness he senses a change, a shift, a disturbance.

Her tongue is in his mouth, sharp and warm. He grasps her neck, angles her head, reciprocates.

It's a song. Something dreadfully familiar.

Her teeth nip at his collarbone.

"What is that?"

"It's nothing," she says. "My cellphone."

"No."

His forehead drops against her shoulder as his vision blurs.

 

 

 

His eyes open to a dingy ceiling, and he tears the lead out of his wrist without even looking, feels the sharp sting of it, how the stale air chills the droplet of blood before he thumbs it away.

"If assertive is what you wanted," she says, and it's her real, live voice this time. She's occupying the plastic chaise adjacent to his, easing the needle out of her wrist with a wince. "You should have just told me."

His entire body thrums with embarrassment.

"Wh-" he clears his throat, starts over. "Where were you?"

"The building across the street."

She stands, rubbing the inside of her wrist.

He sits up as straight as he can in the chair.

"Ariadne, I am so--"

Her palms are flat against the tops of his thighs.

"Arthur, if you don't kiss me right now--"

She never has to ask him twice.  



End file.
